Visitation

By Erica Ottenberg

/ Fiction /    

Daniel sits two feet from Jen across a table sticky with a palimpsest of spilled beer. She hasn’t seen him in twenty-four days. Now it’s like she’s looking at him through a microscope lens—a five-foot-ten specimen on a slide. She can count the pores on his nose and the follicular root of each hair in his five o’clock shadow. A man, reduced to a mound of cells. Particles and pigments and collagen fibers converge, affording him the tint of an underripe peach. 

She suspected it would be the case, but this confirms it: she’s not attracted to him anymore. 

Daniel watches Jen with brown eyes the shape and color of chocolate-dusted almonds. His lashes are full and dark and short. He says nothing, but she knows he wants to. His closed mouth is full of words, and those eyes are full of hope. 

“I’m not super hungry,” Jen says, not to break the silence but to prevent him from doing it. 

“Even for sweet potato fries?” Relief floods from Daniel, pools around him, he actually looks wet. He’s so grateful she gave him something to say. “You know you can’t resist sweet potato fries.” 

She can resist sweet potato fries, and she will.  

The waitress sidesteps Daniel’s backpack, which rests against the base of their table and looks like it belongs in the woods. Turquoise and frayed, it’s something appropriate for camping, or hiking, or following a hippy jam band on tour. Jen straightens her spinal column, jams a wad of curls behind her ear to show off her new piercings. I live here! she pleads to the waitress with her eyes. I hate the woods. 

“Can I get a ginger ale?” says Daniel. Or rather, he asks. Less like he’s inquiring if it’s available, and more like he needs the waitress’s permission to have one at all. Jen’s insides wince. 

“I’ll have a Rolling Rock,” she says with authority. With conviction. Without a question mark.

The waitress’s hand hovers over her spiral pad. Her gaze flicks to Daniel, then back to Jen. Jen’s fake ID is in her bag, if she needs it. 

“Anything else?” the waitress asks. 

The corner of Daniel’s lips lifts in a hopeful half-smile, the same muscle contraction that could curl them into a kiss. Jen scoots her chair to cover the sound of her stomach growling. 

“Nope!” she says. “That’s it!” 

Daniel got lost getting here from Penn Station. The straps of his backpack have left two parallel stripes of sweat down the front of his tie-dyed shirt. He is wearing cargo shorts. Jen gulps water from a glass that has a faded half-moon of someone else’s lipstick imprinted on the rim. 

“Do you come to this place a lot?” he asks. Her refusal of fries has punctured his balloon of hope, she can practically hear the sad little squeak of optimism leaking out. 

Jen has never been to this bar before. “Sometimes,” she replies. 

It’s barely noon, and the tables around them are empty. The room smells of poorly disinfected beer. A TV above the bar plays some soap opera; on the screen, a woman with large hair in a silk robe clutches herself while a man shakes her shoulders from behind. The sound is off, so Jen supplies the dialogue in her mind. 

Dammit, Fiona! How could you do this to me?!

Forgive me, Sebastian! You could never hate me more than I hate myself!

When she’d told him to meet her here, instead of at her apartment, Daniel had been surprised. In retrospect, it might have been better just to go home. She could have ripped off the Band-Aid of physical contact, submitted her epidermis to his salivary glands. If nothing else, his giant blue backpack wouldn’t be publicly humiliating her. Jen’s Rolling Rock arrives with another dingy glass, so she sips straight from the bottle. She doesn’t even like beer. 

“You look great. Really great.” Daniel gives her a chance to return his grin. “Different…” Heavily, he reaches across the tabletop and traces a finger down the helix of her ear. Jen reminds herself to apply alcohol to the tiny gold studs she’d had herself impaled with on St. Mark’s two weeks before. “…But great.” 

Jen’s teeth clink against the lip of her beer bottle, shooting a numbing tingle to the back of her head. Like knocking your funny bone, or when a doctor takes a rubber hammer to your knee. 

None of this is Daniel’s fault. Not his incongruous backpack, or his babyish beverage, or his expectation that she’d want him to make love to her in her tiny Brooklyn bedroom all afternoon. 

But Jen doesn’t want to make love. Jen wants to fuck. 

Daniel is Jen’s first boyfriend. He’s a grad student, six (almost seven) years older, and that used to feel cool. Their relationship vaguely scandalous—talked about, at least. People know her; she’s the one dating their teaching assistant. She, who’d been such a late bloomer she thought she might die on the vine. Daniel is really smart, and he’s really nice. There is nothing wrong with him except that she’s spent the last three-and-a-half weeks on her own, in an impossibly vital city, and she has yet to see a single guy wearing cargo shorts. 

The dregs of Daniel’s soda deliver a loud, aerating slurp. Does he have to drink through that skinny red cocktail straw? Jen takes a swig from her bottle to show him how it’s done. Swallows a burp. Considers ordering a hundred more beers.  

“Should we go back to your place?” Daniel asks. Not: let’s go back to your place. Should we? 

They shouldn’t. Not yet. 

* * *

Outside, heat glances off their bodies where a residual film of air conditioning still shields. It won’t last long. Soon, the swelter of 1pm July will eke in like a spoon crackling through the crust of a crème brûlée. Where should they go? Jen’s student ID gets her a discount at most museums. They could see a Broadway show? He’d pay, at least. But she’s not sure if you need to buy tickets ahead of time, and she doesn’t want Daniel to know she doesn’t know. 

In a move less amorous than avuncular, he takes her hand as they approach the corner of Waverly Place. It’s a straight shot down Sixth Avenue and the Twin Towers stand sentry, hulking chaperones reserving judgment but anticipating fallout. Don’t look, Jen wants to tell them. Just look away. 

The first time she and Daniel held hands, they’d been in his car, driving back from lunch in a part of town she’d never been to. No one went to that part of town who didn’t have a car. She could have; it wasn’t that far from campus, a fifteen-minute walk, maybe. But that was enough. 

She’d just returned from Thanksgiving break. The heat in Daniel’s Camry was fogging the glass. He’d taken her to an American-Asian Fusion café that was famous for its barbecue pork pot stickers. She’d ordered French toast and drank so much coffee that her knee was a jackhammer, bouncing uncontrollably in the passenger seat. The preset radio stations were all Classic Rock, and Daniel nodded his head in smooth swoops to the Allman Brothers Band.

Went up on the mountain, to see what I could see

The whole world was fallin' right down in front of me

She’d put a hand on her knee to still it, and without taking his eyes off the road, Daniel had reached over and covered it with one of his. His fingers curled underneath her palm and squeezed lightly, in time to the rhythm of the guitars.

'Cause I'm hung up on dreams I'll never see, yeah, baby

She’d felt a flush of heat, didn’t know if it was from the car defogger or a throb of blood vessels dilating in her face. 

Ah, help me, baby, or this will surely be the end of me

He hadn’t let go all the way back to her dorm. 

The streets today seem less crowded than usual, though she’s not usually in this area at this time. Her internship is in East Midtown, the neighborhood she knows best besides her own in Brooklyn Heights. She tells herself she picked this spot to meet because it is less dorky than Midtown, because Daniel is just visiting. Because she wants to impress. None of this is untrue. It’s also true that, here, they are unlikely to run into anyone she knows. 

The sun is angry. Beer gurgles in her gut. Daniel’s cargo shorts droop; a backpack that big and he still has stuff in his pockets? Jen stops short in the middle of the sidewalk, gently-but-firmly retrieves her hand. 

In five weeks, she will return home to the Boston suburbs. Then it’s another three before she goes back to school. Daniel was supposed to be done with his PhD program this past spring, but he’s taking an extra year to finish his dissertation. She has to pass his apartment on the way to her thesis advisor’s office. Unless she takes the long way around. 

“So. Where are we going?” Daniel’s face has a slick sheen, the backpack straps thwarting his shoulders from lifting into a shrug to swipe it dry it. Passing taxis taunt. Jen wishes to be ferried across the Brooklyn Bridge, wind buffeting her face from an open backseat window. But cabs are too expensive a luxury for an unpaid intern. And she’s not ready to go back to Brooklyn just yet. 

“Washington Square Park.” A shadeless, unairconditioned park: that’s the best she can come up with? Daniel’s eyebrows knit together. With his mouth slightly open, Jen sees his tongue is speckled with a chalky film. When she’d met him outside earlier, she’d kissed him with her mouth closed. 

“How far is it?” He jams his thumbs under the backpack straps, by his armpits. Shifts left and right and cracks his back. Jen pictures his vertebrae yawn. 

“Just a couple blocks.” Already, she is trotting off the curb and into the crosswalk to make the light. 

* * *

The park was a bad idea. Not just because it is scorching, or because Daniel insists on paying for his soft pretzel in quarters when there’s a whole line behind him. But whatever she subconsciously hoped would diffuse this swelling sense of dread, this rolling boil of revulsion, it’s having the opposite effect. 

“Smoke smoke smoke,” a guy mutters at them in disconcerting surround sound, like he’s in all four of their ears at once. Jen knows to ignore him, but Daniel says, loudly, “No thanks, man,” and she wants to die. 

“They try to sell you weed just all out in the open?” Daniel is incredulous. “Aren’t they afraid they’ll get busted?” 

“Well, most people don’t draw so much attention to them.” Jen’s pace puts her a consistent half-step in front of Daniel, but she can’t make herself slow down. “You don’t smoke—he’s got it! And so does half the park!” 

On the edge of the fountain in the center of the square, an old man has his shirt off and his bare feet in the water. His jeans are so dirty, they’re the color of the gray stone he’s perched on. The spray of water in the center flings and flounces, spitting in the face of the sweaty swelter that’s making Jen’s curls expand like dough in an oven. It smells like piss. 

“Scenic!” Daniel stage-whispers. He sets down his pack, doesn’t know to hook his foot through a strap to keep it safe, though, really, who would even want to steal that thing. “I see why you love it here.” The man in the fountain coughs violently and spits. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not surprised you don’t.” The words come out pointier than Jen would have intended, had she given them enough consideration to qualify as intent. Daniel rocks back on his heels and looks away. She takes the opportunity to feel guilty. “Sorry, Country Mouse!” She knows she should touch him. He’s just so damp.

The way the heat radiates off the asphalt paving stones, they might as well be walking on the surface of the sun. Daniel hoists his backpack and flashes a fleshy section of back where his cargo shorts have slipped. His discomfort is so palpable she feels like she could step inside it, zip it up around her like a sleeping bag. Why has she dragged them here? 

They wander towards the southwest corner of the park, where a few red maples tease the vague idea of shade. The chess tables are abandoned but for one, where a man in a fedora and a striped collared shirt sits before a board and motions them over. Jen instinctively veers away and pretends not to see, but Daniel waves back. 

“Afternoon, brother,” the man says. “Five bucks for a game.”

Daniel grins. “Bargain!” He dumps the backpack and collapses onto a bench. Jen considers fleeing the park entirely; she could outrun Daniel even without the albatross of that blue monstrosity on his back. Instead, she reluctantly shuffles to his side. “Daniel,” Daniel says, thrusting out a hand to his opponent.

“Tony,” the man says, returning his shake. How is the guy not sweating in that long-sleeved shirt? It’s buttoned all the way to his wrists. The pinky ring on his right hand looks like it’s been permanently soldered on behind a bulbous knuckle. He’ll definitely be buried in that thing. “This your lady?” 

Daniel nods. “This is Jen. But watch out—she’s in a mood.” 

“Daniel!” 

“Ho boy, you’re in for it now!” The man laughs and puts five minutes on the clock. 

“I came all the way out here to visit her. Would you believe, I’ve never been to New York?” Daniel is playing white, makes his opening move. Jen doesn’t know how to play chess. Daniel tried to teach her once, but she couldn’t bend her brain toward it. He is more relaxed now than he has been since he arrived. Tony moves a piece, and Daniel moves again. 

“You’d better show my boy some sugar!” Tony says. The moves are swift, and neither man reacts to the play with any emotion, so Jen can’t tell who’s in the lead. Captured pieces gather on the edges of the board, like little kids getting tagged out in a playground game and rooting the remaining players on from the sidelines.  

“Thank you, Tony.” Daniel peers up at her. “He said it, I didn’t.” 

“Checkmate.” Tony leans back, hands clasped behind his neck. Daniel does a deferential little bow and tips over his King.  

“Good game, man.” He reaches into the pocket of his shorts and pulls out a wad of crumpled singles. “That was the most fun I’ve had all day. Keep the change!” 

Tony takes off his fedora and presses it to his chest. With his other hand, he points at Jen. “You! You got a man right there. Be good to my brother!” 

“You too,” Jen blurts nonsensically. She wants to be away from here on a cellular level. 

* * *

Of course, the train picks today to roll up just as they get to the platform, making a mockery of Jen’s attempt to manifest a subway delay. Cool air embraces them as they step into the car, and Daniel lets out a loud, suggestive sigh.

Jen considers jumping onto the third rail. 

The blue backpack takes up a full seat’s worth of space, but there aren’t enough people on the train for it to matter. “How many stops?” Daniel asks. Only the edges of his short sleeves are still dry, the front of his t-shirt plastered to his chest. On his back is an enormous Rorschach blot of sweat. 

 “Seven.” 

Again, she knows there are words burbling and bumbling around inside him. They are complemented by the rumble of the F train, she fears they will come cascading out when the doors open at the next stop. Jen has words, too. She has been polishing them like gravel in a rock tumbler for weeks. She wants them to be smooth, unimpeachable. But she just knows they’re going to make someone choke. 

At East Broadway, a doo-wop group steps onto the train. The trio strolls through the car in perfect three-part harmony, one of them holding out his flat cap for donations of loose change or the occasional hard-won dollar bill. 

Oh, when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof

And your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fire proof

The singers pause when they get to Daniel, who juts out his legs and arches his back for leverage as he fishes around in his innumerable cargo pockets. He succeeds in finding what turns out to be a ten-dollar bill. If he asks them for change, so help me, Jen thinks. Daniel does pause momentarily, then lets the bill fall into the cap. The singer beams, and the three men get down on their knees, flickering jazz hands around Jen and Daniel in a horrifying Big Finish:

Under the boardwalk… We'll be fallin' in love… Yeah!

Jen considers donning the cap herself, forcing the men to adopt her as they walk into the next train car to sing another song. 

“Smile!” In a practiced lilt, the tallest man calls over his shoulder as he drags open the heavy sliding door between the cars. “It won’t mess up your hair!”

It’s still hot in Brooklyn, but something has taken the edge off. The air is muffled, muted—when she’s out of Manhattan, sound doesn’t have the same stark scratch. Afternoon has yet to tip into evening, the day drags like Daniel’s steps as he follows her down the street. Past the bagel place, past the bodega, past the old Italian bakery that makes the rainbow cookies she’s addicted to. He doesn’t try to talk. He just breathes.

The apartment Jen is staying in belongs to a friend of her mother’s cousin who is spending the summer hiking the Appalachian Trail. It is a fifth-floor walk-up, furnished entirely in teak wood and thin rugs with tribal patterns. Instead of rent, she is responsible for watering a distressing number of hanging plants. She has to reignite the pilot light on the stove every time she wants to cook. The toilet flushes with a pull chain. There is a fire escape she sits on to smoke.

“Nice digs,” Daniel says. 

Back at school, Daniel’s off-campus apartment is on the ground floor of a small house. They watch TV on a beige microfiber couch, and Daniel makes stir fry in an electric wok. In bed she wears his old t-shirts, and he tells her she is beautiful, that he wants her, that he loves her. He is the first and only person who has ever told her this. 

At first, dating Daniel was like a group sport, the way her friends rallied around her and plotted every play. Lending her cute tops to wear to her “Institutions and Society” seminar, attacking her with perfume before Office Hours. Her roommate Samantha dragging her to Victoria’s Secret before their third date: “Your bras are a crime against those gorgeous tits. I’ve stayed silent for too long.” 

“No, you haven’t!” Jen had called from inside the dressing room, hooking herself into a red lace balcony bra with matching panties. One of Samantha’s favorite topics was bemoaning Jen’s lack of sexy lingerie. “I feel like a whore in this!”

“Good!” Samantha had poked her head through the curtain and clapped. “Then my work here is done!” 

Jen misses her friends. Not just now, away from them for the summer. But even last year, as she went with them to classes, to parties, she’d begun to feel… estranged. A little bit foreign. Like she was just visiting. Late at night, she’d leave them with each other and go to Daniel’s, let herself in with her own key, slip into his bedroom after he was already asleep. He’d slide his arms around her, turn her towards him, find her mouth with his. Push inside her with his fingers, squeeze like he did that day in his car when he first held her hand. Again, again, pulsing to a silent rhythm that made her feel so good that she also felt a little sick. And she’d come, a sweet ache with a muffled moan, and Daniel would murmur “yes, baby, I love you so much, baby” into her ear, and she would wonder what everyone else was doing right now. 

In the other room, Daniel inspects the books stacked on the floor next to her bed. “Ayn Rand, huh?” Jen doesn’t answer, goes into the narrow galley kitchen to wash her hands. On the street below, a woman hefts two gigantic trash bags full of aluminum cans. The window is open a few inches, and Jen can hear the scrape and clang as they drag down Clinton Street. She considers calling down to the woman, asking if she’ll put Jen in one of her big black trash bags and haul her away.

Daniel is behind her. She hadn’t heard him come in. She steps to the side before he can speak, before he can touch. “You probably want to wash up,” she says. 

He looks at her for a beat. “OK.” 

She shows him the bathroom, how you have to turn the hot water all the way on and the cold almost all the way off. She closes the door but not before he has discarded his t-shirt, standing before the Chinoiserie printed shower curtain in just his sneakers and those goddamn shorts. 

At her internship, Jen shares a desk with a guy named Jay. He goes to UCLA and smokes American Spirits, is her age and does not wear cargo shorts. Jay likes to prank call her from the other side of their cubicle partition, pretending to be the weird I.T. guy whom he insists has a crush on her.  On Friday, they both brought in rainbow cookies from their respective Italian bakeries and did a blind taste test. Hers won. 

She hears the shower turn off. 

Daniel is staying for two nights. He wanted to stay longer, but she told him to take the 10am out on Monday because she has to work. When Jay had asked her what she was up to this weekend, she said she had a friend in town. She’d like to think it was a sin of omission. She knows it is more of a lie. 

The bra Jen is wearing now is old and stretched out and a depressing, faded shade of “nude.” Samantha would be aghast. “I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed,” she’d say. Jen walks quietly to the now vacated bathroom, closes the door and turns the water back on. Maybe she’ll feel better clean.  

The body wash is raspberry scented. Jen’s loofah is wet; she imagines it laden with microscopic molecules of Daniel’s shed skin. She leaves it hanging from the faucet handle and instead slathers fuchsia gel onto herself with her hands, whipping it into bubbles with circular strokes. Her curls are thirsty, sucking up water for tens of seconds before they’re saturated. Her shampoo tingles, a combination of rosemary and mint. 

Jen and Daniel showered together before they ever had sex. They’d been dating for almost three months, Jen wasn’t even sure why she was holding out. Daniel never put any pressure on her. Maybe she was waiting for that. 

They’d been naked in the dark plenty of times—hands-turned-eyes, feeling their way to the edges of ecstasy, to sticky, shuddering release. With the lights out, on her back under his pilled cotton comforter, Jen was a willing recipient. Daniel did things to her, and she liked it, even if afterwards she had to breathe through a haze of something like shame. 

Usually, she left his place at first light. Stepped back through the portal into her regular life, where she could act her age. But one Sunday morning, he convinced her to stay. It was rainy, and Samantha was out of town, and Daniel said he’d make her pancakes. “OK,” she’d said, and he kissed her on the forehead. 

She’d used Daniel’s soap, his shampoo, his razor, their severed fibers mingling in the shower drain. She’d been absently watching Pert Plus swirl like an oil slick around her feet when the plastic curtain opened. 

Daniel said nothing, just stepped over the lip of the tub and drew the curtain closed around them. He leaned past her to slip the cracked bar of Irish Spring out of its gummy dish. Began to unhurriedly lather himself from neck, to chest, to armpits on down. Jen had wanted to get out. She felt like a bug trapped beneath an overturned glass. But she didn’t move. 

Daniel stepped forward so they were both under the showerhead. Water drummed down in between, where their bodies slid against each other—her back was cold. She blinked and tried to step away, but Daniel trickled his fingers down her arms and held her at the elbows. She’d felt him against her and there was this thrumming feeling, was it the water from outside, was it her blood on the inside, was it him, was it her? 

“Don’t hide,” Daniel said. “You don’t have to hide from me.” 

He wouldn’t kiss her until she met his eyes. Then he kissed her everywhere. He made her explode, long and loud, and he looked, and she let him. She was a grown-up now, she guessed. 

Even in this weather, Jen wants her shower scalding. But Daniel has used up most of the hot water, and now it is lukewarm at best. The pipes grunt as she turns off the taps and considers staying here, waiting this out, her head tipped forward—a weeping willow, drooped. She lets her curls drip dents into the plush yellow bathmat. How many droplets until they’ll be dry? 

There’s nowhere left to go. And as Daniel himself once said, he doesn’t want her to hide. Their relationship has run its course, like the hot water. Should she use that analogy? I’m sorry, but you’ve left me cold. I’m not comfortable. I want to get out. Why do all her explanations come across so cruel? 

The blue backpack sits on the floor between Daniel’s feet, and he sits on her bed. He is wearing fresh clothes: a plain black t-shirt and twill pants. Zero cargo pockets. He is blessedly dry, cheeks flushed from the hot water he bogarted. Jen is suddenly relieved he didn’t see her in that crummy old bra. 

“Hey,” she says. He blinks slowly with his chocolate almond eyes. “You look nice, Country Mouse.” He doesn’t move, still. Under her towel, Jen’s nerve endings start to spar with terry cloth loops. Her flesh prickles, not unpleasantly. She shifts her weight between bare feet, feels a tightening sensation somewhere low and deep. Why won’t he look at her? 

“I called my buddy at NYU,” Daniel says. “He says I can stay with him.”

“What? Wait—”

“It’s OK.” His half-smile is pained, as if from a non-fatal wound. “I get it.”

“Get what? I—” She waits for him to interrupt, which he does not. “Daniel—” She had so many words! Now she chews on a clump of sludge. “You’re—It’s—I’m in a towel!” 

He stands. “I love you. But I know, it’s time.” The raspberry shower gel smells different on him. Like dessert, but darker. 

Jen considers dropping her towel and flinging her naked body onto him. She considers punching him in the face. She considers grabbing the blue backpack and pissing on it, in it, indelibly imprinting her insides onto his dirty balled-up cargo shorts. Her eyes ache, her chest flutters with shallow breaths. There is matching red lace lingerie in the armoire just behind him, in the top left drawer. He is about to make her cry, but she needs him to make her come. 

She does none of these things. Just steps into his arms—into muscles, membranes, blood, bone. She is encircled by tendons, by tissue. Synapses stretch and snap.

“I mean, you could have told me before I flew all the way out here,” he murmurs, a soft sigh in his words. She does not move. “You’ll be OK.” 

He’s right, she knows. Other hands will touch her, other fingers, other mouths. This is what she wanted but couldn’t find the words for. He is doing her a favor. Now she can un-grow up.  

“Don’t go,” she whispers. Want me, she means. Can’t they just be bodies for a little longer? 

“You don’t really mean that.” But his voice thickens. She doesn’t mean it, and she does. Is something still a lie if it doesn’t start out that way? 

She steps back, stands straight. Locks eyes with him because he likes that, because he loves her. Lowers her towel to the floor. Breathing quickens, blood vessels constrict. She kicks the blue backpack out of the way. It tips over but it’s zipped, so the contents don’t spill. She doesn’t have to look at what’s inside.

“Don’t go,” she says again. 

She won’t mean it tomorrow. But she means it right now.